A jaguar! A freaking jaguar! One of those spotted jungle cats that mainly live in Mexico and in Central and South America was captured just south of Tucson. The Arizona Game and Fish Department actually was studying the movements of mountain lions and black bears when they were fortunate enough to catch the jaguar and fit it with a radio collar.
Some background on the jaguar. It is the largest cat in the Americas, and the only one that can roar. worldwide, it stands behind the tiger and the lion as the third-largest cat on the planet. They were once considered common in Arizona until the last one was killed in 1963. The one caught last week is thought to be 15 or 16 years old. Named “Macho B,” he has been photographed by automatic cameras on a few occasions since the late 1990’s. His habitat is thought to be mainly in northern Mexico with some of his territory overlapping into the southern U.S.
That’s not a picture of the specific jaguar that was caught here, though, in my original post. After looking around, I found one. This is the jaguar, Macho B, as shown in a photograph from July, 2008.
Hell, I got excited when I heard that a beaver had been spotted in the Detroit River after sixty years…But a jaguar! So beautiful! And where there is one…
You might be interested in the article in this month’s National Geographic titled “Path of the Jaguar” regarding trying to keep corridors between populations of jaguars from being developed.
I remember reading about that jaguar when I was in El Paso. I saw mountain lions a couple of times in El Paso–once one was drinking out of my pool.
Shayna–you are correct about the wall disrupting the habitat. Where I live now, there is much concern for the ocelots and other rare native animals that are having their access to the river blocked.:mad:
